How NASA Will Bomb the Moon To Find Water

mattnyc99 writes "A few weeks ago we got first word of NASA's plan to crash a spacecraft into the moon next February. The new issue of Popular Mechanics has an in-depth look at the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite and its low-cost, lightning-fast mission prep — even if delays have pushed it to late February or early March. Quoting: 'Andrews had no budget for an expensive lander to seek water, and conditions in the eternally dark polar craters would kill rovers, with temperatures close to minus 300 F. Instead, Blue Ice and its partners at Northrop Grumman came up with a concept to bring the lunar floor out in the open.... Since engineering precision hardware would break the budget, the LCROSS team had to make existing components work together.'"

Comments

Bomb what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Next they'll bomb Uranus in order to find it's filled with gas.

Re:Bomb what?

[gfxguy]

I'm still waiting for them to rename that planet to Urectum to stop the stupid jokes.

percussion engineering!

[notgm]

I hit stuff to fix it all the time, why shouldn't they?

Re:percussion engineering!

[slittle]

"Percussive maintenance"

That Old Mr. Show bit

[Hoplite3]

"The United States can, should, and will BLOW UP THE MOON!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHpX5aa5Lz4

Bombing the Moon for water?

[BitterOldGUy]

You mean liberate the Moon, don't you?

And I find the 'water' reason to be pretty transparent. We all know that there's oil up there and this is yet another neo-con plan that's going to suck us into another war to boost Bush's ratings. But when images of those poor Amazon women up there start coming back, it's jut going to blowup in their faces like Iraq did, and further depress our economy.

Re:The Time Machine

[Tablizer]

In that movie, construction was starting on the moon. To kick off the construction, a large bomb was set off. The result, the moon cracked in half and people eventually started to eat each other.

Geez, a plot like that'd make me crack the DVD in half and eat it.
     

Risk of retaliation

[dkleinsc]

The good news is that the Loonies can't do anything about it. I mean, all they could do is throw rocks at us, and what good would that do?

Re:Wasn't this the plot of that Time Machine Remak

[ColdWetDog]

My God. Has the IQ of Slashdot dropped twenty points in the last fifteen minutes?

It's a bit hard to tell but I'm afraid you're on to something. We seem to be getting more "whoosh" posts before the joke.

Re:Wasn't this the plot of that Time Machine Remak

[rhyder128k]

You obviously don't know much about the science behind how they invented the moon. Because there isn't gravity on the moon, any small knock, no matter how small, could send it flying off into outer space. This ACTUALLY HAPPENED in a TV series called Space 1999.

Look up gravity on the internet, if you don't believe me. I don't like the idea of loosing the moon just for sake of an experiment.

Re:Earth's Orbit?

[Anonymous Coward]

African or European fly?

Re:Earth's Orbit?

[roc97007]

> Isn't Earth's orbit intimately mingled with it's moon?? How precise can the potential impact be measured in relation to this fact? I think Earth's orbit is fine where it is...

Sigh. I blame public schooling.